Before winning three BAFTAs and earning lifetime achievement kudos from the British National Comedy Awards, Dame Thora Hird charmed audiences as Emily, a feisty Salvation Army Captain who refuses to go gently into retirement. She and eager recruit Sister Alice (Patsy Rowlands) head for Brigthorpe and Blackwick, two working-class towns in Yorkshire that the good Captain envisions as latter-day Sodom and Gomorrahs. There they lay siege to the pubs, strip clubs, and assorted dens of iniquity—not to mention the Anglicans, Methodists, and other competitors—to try to bring an eccentric lot of smalltown sinners to salvation. Irreverent but never irreligious, the comedy skewers hypocrisy of all kinds, and Dame Thora invests Emily with respect while still remaining risible. The 15-episode ITV sitcom aired in the U.K. in the mid-1980s and on U.S. television in the 1990s.